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When my first Phillips failed, CC replaced it (at the store) with a new Sony. However, that caused me to lose the Lifetime TiVo subscription (another story).

When the Sony failed I took that one to the store and was told I would have to call the national number for service. I did and they shipped me a refurbished unit. It worked fine except that the optical output was dead. So refurbished units are not always as good as new. The replacement for that one was OK.

They send a replacement and you use that box with a prepaid UPS sticker to return the old one within thirty days.

quote:Originally posted by Scott Corbett When the Sony failed I took that one to the store and was told I would have to call the national number for service. I did and they shipped me a refurbished unit. It worked fine except that the optical output was dead. So refurbished units are not always as good as new.

Obviously "good as new" in your case was in fact, good as new. Your new one failed, and so did the replacement. Equal quality.

Seriously, refurbs cannot have 100% quality control any more than new ones or they would cost a fortune. A new unit could just as easily have failed.

In fact, I exchanged a defective Philips DSR 6000 at CC that proved defective out of the box about 3 years ago. The new one I got in exchange had a hard disk failure about 60 days later and I had to send that one back for a factory refurb. I still have that unit and it has given me no problems at all.

I went through this process with Circuit City last Friday and yesterday (6/28). Apparently, because they don't have any refurbs available yet, they told me (via voice mail) that I should exchange it at a store (they gave me a confirmation number that the store could look up to see that this was authorized). Unfortunately, none of the stores have them yet.

After talking to a bunch of different people at Circuit City, they ended up telling me that I should get a replacement from D*. They said that doing so, wouldn't affect my extended warranty at CC. But I'm not 100% sure that this is policy or only because they had authorized that I go through D*. I made sure that they noted this authorization on my file and kept the Confirmation #, Incident # and the name and phone number of the Service department person who geve me the authorization through the CSR to whom I was actually speaking.

Did CC offer to send another unit, if you waited until they came back in stock online? How about a refund, since they cannot do what the warranty clearly states. I have that warranty, one of the few times I ever bought a extended one. I had one to fail but I just took it back for a refund, because it was under 30 days.

I'm not sure I'd be interested in talking to Directv, they might pull that, "we will send a Tech out".. and I've been wondering, how does one handle that if they have, hmm, moved? lol..

At Sears if something dies under the service plan, they just hand you a new one. I've dealt with service plan replacements at CC and Sears, and Sears is far far better than CC. I had a $200 portable phone base + answering machine that died under the CC protection plan and after I mailed them the original unit, they eventually sent me gift cards.

Under the Sears plan they either hand you a new on on the spot, have you pick out a different one, or let you upgrade to a better item right there. Would you rather wait 6-8 weeks or 6-8 minutes?

quote:Originally posted by Tom L Did CC offer to send another unit, if you waited until they came back in stock online?

Kind of. But it wasn't that straight forward. I'd have to return the first unit to the local store and then attempt to buy another one online when they became available.

quote:
How about a refund, since they cannot do what the warranty clearly states.

They didn't specifically offer one. But I didn't ask for one either. Based on the methodology for getting a new unit from the website, I guess there was nothing that actually required me buying a new one from them.

quote:
I'm not sure I'd be interested in talking to Directv, they might pull that, "we will send a Tech out"..

I had concerns about that as well. However, I had the name and phone # of the Circuit City service person who was authorizing the swap. I was told by CC that if there were any questions on D*'s part, I should have them call her directly. Essentially, D* was doing the swap on behalf of Circuit City. If I had the "we will send a Tech out" issue, I could have just as easily said "Never mind" and called the CC service person directly.

After talking to the level 1 CSR and telling them that CC told me to call them for a swap, I was transferred directly to the group that does the swaps. There was no problem resolution attempted at all. The only reason that I even had to tell them what the problem was, was to allow them to enter it into their system.